Holder: If we could maybe just stay those F&F docs indefinitely, that’d be great

Erika JohnsenPosted at 11:31 am on January 18, 2013

As President Obama searches for ways to suggest and further enforce federal laws that he supposes will have some kind of a mitigating effect on gun violence, his Most Transparent Administration, Evah is still trying to block Freedom of Information Act requests that might possibly puncture the well-orchestrated smokescreen surrounding the gun violence that they directly perpetrated. Perfect.

Breitbart has the scoop on the Obama administration wondering whether we all just can’t pretend that Operation Fast & Furious — the deadly gunrunning scheme and the subsequent investigation, coverup, invocation of executive privilege, and Attorney General Eric Holder being held in contempt of Congress — maybe just never happened at all. If we could sweep this whole thing under the rug and just go about our business, that would be really super awesome, guys:

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Mm hmm. The DOJ is arguing that this lawsuit should be subject to a stay because of the separate lawsuit already filed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but does anybody else get the distinct impression that the administration, for whatever reason, has a very definite interest in these documents never seeing the light of day? Eric Holder’s function as a “heat shield” for President Obama must be darn near priceless for his sketchy record of, at best, egregious incompetence, to warrant him a second shot as head of the DOJ.

Update: Oh, and that managerial incompetence I just mentioned? The mind reels:

The Justice Department rarely checks references for potential law-enforcement hires as recommended by official groups that oversee personnel practices, according to a report released Thursday by the agency’s inspector general. …

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz found that the Justice Department only requires the verification procedure for new attorney applicants. Even then, not all divisions within the agency follow protocol, the report said.

Only three out of 39 divisions have created written policies that provide clear reference-checking guidance for hiring officials, according to the analysis.

The inspector general noted that some hiring officials “are simply not bothering to check references,” concluding that inconsistencies within the department’s practices “create risk that components are not uniformly and thoroughly screening applicants.”